Owner laments lack of available labour on the island
NASSAU, BAHAMAS- A prominent Abaco retailers yesterday estimated that his grocery store business was at 40 percent pre-Dorian sales levels, while lamenting the lack of available labour on the island.
Chad Sawyer, owner of Maxwell’s told Eyewitness News: “We’re probably back 40 percent of what sales were pre-Dorian.
“We have about 60-70 employees currently. I could hire five or six more people right now just to stock the shelves. We’re good in other areas. We have a labour shortage now.
Sawyer said: “Many Abaconians obviously have not been able to return yet. Even in the grocery store we have problems finding persons just to stack the shelves. We used to have a lot of school kids working part-time but a lot of them have left the island to attend school in Nassau or other places.”
“When you look at the damages Abaco sustained, the real question is where are we going to find all the labour needed to rebuild.
“The questions is where are these people going to live. Even when you look at the amount of stuff that needs to be shipped here, we can’t do it with the just the two vessels that ship here.”
According to Sawyer there is still a lot of clean up that needs to be done on the island.”
“There is still a lot of cleanup that has to be done,” he said.
“I still have a lot of rebuilding to do. We have two warehouses that we are trying to rebuild. The materials we need is not hard to get but again the labour component is the issue.”
Maxwell’s reopened last November, a month after Hurricane Dorian ravaged the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama.
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